Entertainment Software for Lonely Children is the App Store oddity of the year

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If you’re not really into the jump scares of the surprisingly popular Five Nights at Freddy’s and are looking for a more subtle type of creepiness, Folmer Kelly’s Entertainment Software for Lonely Children will do the job in less than a minute. The psychologically unsettling game — thanks in part to the simple, droning tones of the soundtrack — is a very strange take on the classic Pong, but meant to represent the frustration of being a lonely child, attempting to play a multiplayer game by yourself.

As Kelly puts it in the app’s description, ESFLC is a game about Kelly talking to himself when he played two-player games by his lonesome. It’s a simple take on Pong, but the controls are deliberately frustrating to simulate the experience of attempting to manipulate two controllers by yourself — one paddle goes up, the other goes down. If there’s a traditional game here, it’s to maintain a rally to increase your score, but the real point of the game becomes clear when you fail: you get advice. It’s not normal advice, though — it’s advice you wish you could go back and tell the younger version of yourself.

Taken out of context, the lines of advice are more sad than creepy, representing both major and minor insecurities you could have as a kid — from your family’s monetary struggles to hoping the boys at school don’t find out you have pink curtains in your room. However, the tone quickly becomes creepy when you realize the crude, 8-bit face is a representation of you giving advice to your younger self, while you play a two-player game with yourself — especially with that soundtrack droning on.

The game is $0.99, which seems like too much considering ESFLC isn’t really a game, and especially because other games with the same price offer much more content. Compared with a $2 cup of coffee, though, the nervous laughs when you show your friends the game are worth a buck.